Which uncompressed format for sending to QuickTime...

[DammitJanet]

I have a four minute short that I edited in Vegas and I rendered the clips into Cineform Intermediate AVI's before I edited them. When I got everything arranged I was under the impression that I didn't need to convert everything back to m2t's. I was told I could just render from there. Well, I tried two versions at 720p, one as a WMV(9) and one an MP4. Neither came out looking particularly clean, so I decided to try rendering out an uncompressed AVI and then using QuickTime 7 Pro to render out an H.264 encoded MOV.

So the uncompressed AVI came out to be 30GB, which kind of shocked me since it's less than four minutes of video and sound. Someone tell me if that sounds suspicious. I followed these helpful instructions and two and a half hours later QuickTime spit out a MOV that looks beautiful, and it's only 10 megabytes. Of course, my sound got lost somewhere along the way, but it was only a test so I wasn't crying over it. Now that I know how I want to render this thing out for web viewing, I'd like to know if there's another lossless or uncompressed format I can use that won't be 30 gigs when I render it out before sending it to QuickTime.

EDIT: It should be noted that the rendering times reported on this page were handled on a PC with a 1.8Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM. After performing the tasks on my own 3.0Ghz P4 cpu with 2GB of RAM, I noticed a significant drop in rendering times. What took around two and a half hours on the first PC takes a half hour or less on my own machine, for what it's worth.

 

[DammitJanet]

I've heard that Apple's Animation setting might be suitable.

Can anyone confirm this or recommend another uncompressed format?

 

[DammitJanet]

Well, I went ahead and tried rendering out a MOV using the Apple Animation type and the uncompressed file came out to be 15GB instead of 30GB using uncompressed AVI. Then after five hours of rendering in QuickTime, the final H.264 MOV came out to be 13mb. I compared it to the first H.264 MOV I made from the AVI and there was no discernible difference between the two. Needless to say, we're getting there, but I still have questions.

When I render the ucompressed file, I render it out at 1440x1080. I'm wondering if I can render it out at 480x270 (the size at which it will eventually end up at when I render the H.264) and still re-render without a loss in quality. And I'm still open to suggestions if anyone has any ideas as to a better uncompressed format to start with.

Guess I'm off to try out the 480x270 test. I'll let you all know how it goes. I'm sure you're just glued to your seats.

 

[jinks]

Hi there, I read those quiktime instructions and tried to output a 450mb avi file but after exorting, it ends up as 27.0 kb file which won't play. When i import a larger file, they all end up as 27 kb files that won't play at all. What can I do to fix it?
Thank you!

 

[Arrow]

DammitJanet,

Try the link below and read post #7 then follow the link, it helped me when I was having trouble, what I found out was export from fcp then use the exported movie and export to QT. Settings of 300 for key frames etc will help just read ken stone's stuff and update it, to the codec you are using like H.264 or whatever.

Hope this helps you,

Arrow

Link to Ken Stone (Quicktime Stuff)

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=101137

 

[DammitJanet]

Hi there, I read those quiktime instructions and tried to output a 450mb avi file but after exorting, it ends up as 27.0 kb file which won't play. When i import a larger file, they all end up as 27 kb files that won't play at all. What can I do to fix it?
Thank you!

At the moment I'm really not sure what could be causing that. Needless to say, your file should be smaller but not that small. I'd say double check your settings for now, and go over the instructions again, but it sounds like something else is amiss. Perhaps someone else can help you figure it out. Sorry I can't be of more help.

 

[DammitJanet]

DammitJanet,

Try the link below and read post #7 then follow the link, it helped me when I was having trouble, what I found out was export from fcp then use the exported movie and export to QT. Settings of 300 for key frames etc will help just read ken stone's stuff and update it, to the codec you are using like H.264 or whatever.

Hope this helps you,

Arrow

Link to Ken Stone (Quicktime Stuff)

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=101137

Thanks for the input, Arrow. I think the keyframe info will really come in handy and I'll factor it into my tests. Hopefully all this mucking around will result in something useful for other users.

 

[DammitJanet]

I rendered the uncompressed MOV at 480x270 to an H.264 MOV using QT and the only real difference I noticed was that the colors were slightly flatter afterwards. Now I'm comparing that H.264 MOV to an MP4 at that resolution rendered straight out of Vegas. Here's hoping...

EDIT: Well, the MP4 looks absolutely abysmal compared to the H.264 MOV. I guess for smaller projects like this I don't mind the extra step, but others may feel differently. I should also mention that I tried a WMV9 at the same size and it was the worst of everything I've tried so far. The reds were all over the place and just made the actors looked sunburned and gross.

For now, my preferred method would be to render an uncompressed MOV with Vegas using the Apple Animation type at the resolution that I want to end up at, followed by re-rendering that file into an H.264 MOV using QuickTime. If there is any degradation in the picture by re-rendering at the same resolution, I sure can't see it. That will have to do for now, but I will continue to try to find an uncompressed format that will provide smaller files than Apple Animation.

Hope this helps someone besides me.